
Class _JK:1-3^-S4- 



COPi'RIGHT DEPOSm 



RESURRECTING LIFE 



New Poetry: Spring 1921 

IN AMERICAN 

by John V. A. Weaver 

UNACCUSTOMED AS I AM 
by Morrie Ryskind 

THE MYSTIC WARRIOR 
by James Oppenheim 
PUNCH: THE IMMORTAL LIAR 

by Conrad Aiken 

MEDALLIONS IN CLAY 
by Richard Aldington 



RESURRECTING LIFE 

MICHAEL STRANGE 

WITH DRAWINGS BY 
JOHN BARRYMORE 



" If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the 
happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve 
that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aver- 
sions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I 
will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever 
inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints." 

From Emerson, " Self-Reliance." 




NEW YORK ALFREDAKNOPF 



1921 



COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc. 






©CU6146C8 



JUN -4 1921 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



-Hr f 



Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road, 

Healthy, free, the world before me, 

The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose. 

Henceforth I ask not good fortune — I myself am good fortune; 
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing. 
Strong and content, I travel the open road. 

" The Song of the Open Road." 

— Walt Whitman. 



CONTENTS 

Visionary 

I. 3 

II. 6 

III. 7 

IV. 8 
V. 9 

VI. 10 

VII. 11 

VIII. 12 

IX. 13 

X. 14 

XI. 16 

XII. 19 

XIII. 21 

XIV. 23 
XV. 25 

XVI. 26 

XVII. 27 

XVIII. 29 

XIX. 31 

Emotional 

I. 35 

II. 36 

III. 37 

IV. 38 
V. 39 



VI. 41 

VII. 42 

VIII. 44 

IX. 45 

X. 46 

XL 48 

XII. 49 

XIII. 50 

XIV. 51 
XV. 52 

XVI. 55 

XVII. 56 

XVIII. 58 

XIX. 59 

XX. 60 

XXI. 61 

XXII. 62 

XXIII. 64 

XXIV. 66 
XXV. 68 

XXVI. 69 

XXVII. 70 

Descriptive 

I- 75 

n. 76 

III. 77 

IV. 78 
V. 79 

VI. 80 

VII. 82 



VIII. 
IX. 



83 
84 



RESURRECTING LIFE 



VISIONARY 



I 

RESURRECTING LIFE 

It is midday and the wind ofT the desert 

Is choked, flattened down 

In a glaring pulse of heavily beating sunlight — 

And my angel sleeping beside the well, 

His grave brow half hidden 

In the curve of a mighty arm — 

Nor is there a sound. 

Since all grading energies are sucked into this yellow gape 

Of heavily pouring silence — 

Only I am restless — indeterminate — 

And feeling along my limbs for the birth of wings. 

Only I am turned aside 

From partaking in general consciousness — 1 

And because of confusion shielding some dream 

I dare not remember — 

It is still — 

And the olive-trees stand like bereaved mothers 

Gnarled — intercessional — awaiting a Messiah. 

how still it is — 

And the whole sky is like an indrawn breath 

Oppressing my breast in azure vice — 

I am compelled to reduce this restlessness — 
To steal out from under the wing of my angel — 
And away from the crowned shades along his brow — 
[3] 



And powdered with jasmine — lute-haunted — 
Sandalled in myrrh — in eagerness — 
Go to you — there — reaching your listless length 
Significantly toward me — 

Through those close oval aisles of the olive-trees — 
To you there — stretching toward me in vague, half -awakened 
rhythms — 

let our kiss be conclusive — 

Let the spheres heave tides of anguished music 

Over us — 

And a swirl of volcanic spirits frown the air 

Into pelting storm — 

Until — until — those purple shields of terrible exhaustion 

Muttering down upon us — 

And painting across our swooning inward eye — 

Stars — suns — Medusa-haired — 

Aye, until I am free to stir — to detach — and arise 

Passing back into the presence of my angel — my love — 

For maybe he still is sleeping beside the well — 

His grave brow half hidden — 

In the curve of a mighty arm. 

Yet sadness — bleakness of satiety 

Making wilderness of the inner room — 

And my depths only unpinched in this inner room — 

1 without sufficient weakness for rejecting my necessities — 
Or sufficient strength to spiritually profit through repletion — 
darkness — chaos of ice-worms c'oiling shut 

Over my fall between two mainstays — the wing — the claw — 
And both sighted perfectly — 
listlessness — 

And dizzy prick of divided paths under my feet — 
darkening and twisting — and languor against amending — 
Stupefying all reaction — into the calm of void. 
[4] 



Nevertheless approaching me now — such multitudes of exhal- 
ing lilies 

Sheafed under the surpliced arm — 

Beneath the laced slim arm of acolytes — 

They passing me by a long pale spray — 

Upon the thunder boom of chaunting — 

While behind them — outlined in violet dusk — 

And as some purple waterfall erupting from the moon's vague 
crescent 

The vast straight shadow of my pensive angel — 

And a white foam of delight 

Bursting the surface of my skin — 

And forming into patches of silken fleece 

Expanding into curves — dilating into plimies — 

Concurring — spreading — into pinions — wings — 

Soaring me up out of these long entangling earth grasses — 

Into ether — opalescent — faintly barred in gold — 

And finally toward the luminous breast of my angel — my 

love — 
Awaiting me — with such mightily outstretched arms — 
And the tender-breasted clouds 
Breaking from their weight of music — 
And pouring heaven-bright wine down into our ascending 

hearts — 
And a flashing wand of supreme melody — 
Furling back all space — 
Before the great vibrating entry 
Of our eternal union. 



[5] 



II 

THOUGHT 

How beautiful is thought 

Staining me with gusts of pulsating flushes — 

Even as the wind whipping up into towering descendant waves 

All garden fragrance. 

thought is beautiful — 

A jewel through which appearing to me in a most precious 

light 
All of humanity annexing — avoiding — toward inevitably 

spreading 
Into forms more vast — 

O thought — a various lover jetting into life 
Evermore our identity — 
And closing away the personal 
With kindly smile. 

So thought — a depth of extreme polish 

Ever expanding in circles 

And into which are reflected and measured exactly 

Our mortal reactions. 

For thought is a titan's rod thrown wide 
Hooking and hauling toward the surface — 
Those turgid coil-sprawled inmates of sea-bottom. 

And again thought is a hand flung up into paradise — 
For grasping those birds athunder 
Round the brow of God. 
[6] 



Ill 

For ever gathering among these tidal washes of my latest depth 

Waves — forming — rearing — thundering colossally down — 

Until finally extant upon the surface — 

Merely the edge of my meaning — and this — 

Hissing freshly — and toward the degree of your understanding 

With moist — fluctuating — fingers. 



[7] 



IV 

WALKING DOWN TO THE PACIFIC 

I, COMING to weave a lasting garland 

From the perfume of these trellised roses — 

And to preserve the effulgent glare of this summer noon- 
tide— 

So redolent of hay new-mown — so besought with the breath 
of clover — 

So slashed with cool salt rays 

Drifting up from the panting sea. 

I, coming to recall the smell of hot sand 

Draped with panelled sea-grass — 

And to review the flocked shadows of swooping gulls 

Above rushing patterns of foam — 

And to converse with the dabbling pout of tides 

Slipping wistfully backward into Pacific calm. 

While just beside me glittering — earth dunes — 
Garlanded with arrested waterfalls of purple flowers — 
While just behind these mountains — 
Their rhythmic mauve unfolding 
Sharply cutting the sky's humid azure 
In strange titanic profile. 

Ah these mountains — appearing — disappearing for me — 
Among their drifting symphonies of clouds 
So persuading me of peace — 
So pervading me with glances 
From that mysterious grail-like countenance 
Of eternal aspiration. 
[8] 



From where do I waken — from where — 
To be wrung by the breath of intimacies 
Just evaporating from before my pursuing arms — 
To be flattened back aghast from the swift streaking by 
Of forms in profile — poignantly akin — 
Clouded phosphorescent with grief — joy — 
And surely all lately fastened upon me 
In keenest various intercourse — 
Mother — lover — child — all go by — 
Leaving me the echo of a chord vast in pathos — 
For this morning my soul sheathed amongst tattered banners — 
(And the legend across sundered — scorched — 
From struggles invisible to memory — yet none the less pres- 
ent—) 
And shreds of these — blowing up into the day — titanic mist- 
ribbons 
Arresting — abstracting — encompassing me — 
Until my whole being growing aware of slanting mournfully 

backwards 
For a last look — at what — at what — 
Until I am contorted from desiring to step away 
Out of my own proceeding step — 
Away from this alien day and so catching up at last 
With that mystic swirl envisaging — chaunting — 
The History of Me 
Along spherical alley-ways of unspoken age. 



[9] 



VI 

KEENLY aware this morning of my Inward God — 
And sense emanating from Him — 
A bristling halo of irradiant paths — 

And placing my feet trustingly amongst these 

Yet behold — how they scorch — confuse me — 

Folding up — disappearing — before my already started 

step — 
Aye leaving me nauseate — dangling over chaos — 
And with a vast burden pressing out through me — 
While a voice chilling my fear-scaled skin — and proclaiming 
For what other purpose your perpetual Recurrence — 
Save to become further impregnate with Spirit — 
And toward a Birth for ever more fatal — 
To the flesh. 



[10] 



VII 

So much of me still turning back and dancing 
In that red glare of promiscuous praise — 
So much of me still eloquent with bitterness 
Against my oppressors — 

Yet so much of me vigil-haunted 

Arrested in outstretching worshipping attitude 

Toward welcoming some radiance — 

Some lustre vastly forming in contour divinely familiar 

Against the horizon — 

Some splendour — inclining — stepping down — 

Saluting — enfolding — 

To ascend with me again. 



fii] 



VIII 

VISION 

I WILL follow the inward chime 

Back through empurpling cups of concave hills — 

Back through a swaying clot of drowned faces — 

(All fastened and by nightmare pain into the sedge of memory) 

Back beyond those negative rivers stilled past egress — 

And out at last among brightening grasses — 

Grasses rushing up into hills — peaks ■ — 

And up from these through a fume of clouds — aye at last into 

ether — 
Ether — bright with those silver tracks of planet-visiting 

angels — 
And austerely fragrant from the trailing of their doom-lined 

scarves — 
Aye — out into ether himiming from the dart of stars 
Shaken by a choral thunder — 
Until at last appearing among arching naves — 
These ascending in architectural jet — 
And arrested in vast foaming coils of livid lace — 
And where — enlarging at the farthest end of distance — 
The Eucharist — chromatic-rayed 
And holding forth its Mystic Tenant — 
Of Transfigured Rest. 



[12] 



IX 

THOSE vast limbs containing in the chrysalis of me — 

this titanic aerial being so fettered yet 

In the slime of my defective understanding — 

This God with spheres nestling in His palm 

Asleep in me yet — 

And veiled in the stupor of my fear of things 

Concerning this one tiny world. 

this God with His crown of stars 
And breath reminiscent of heavenly gardens — 
And eyes closed over unearthly clarities — 
And eyes closed in considerate love for me — 
Comprehending I am unable to meet so far 
His open look. 

Yet it is a weight — an ever-present significance — 

A wing upon my one shoulder already — 

This feeling myself pregnant 

With such dim horizon stretching form — 

Such form — 

Flinging up before me like a tent pole 

And lowering down the clouds in festoons around it- 

Such form one day springing out of me — out of you 

And sheaved in the hauteur of an image 

We have worshipped through centuries. 



[13] 



Death, I am secretly in love with you — 
For will you not be that arm about me 

Embracing — sustaining — my long desiring to lean back — 
will there not be across your face a fused glow of resem- 
blance 
To all the beloveds lost — searched for — 
Along those mighty roads of the ages — 

will you not hold between your hands 

A deific forge beaten cup of luminous wine — 

For acclaiming the victory of great quests — 

between your hands — gentle as the hushed flutter of 
wings — 

Will you not bear this wine — 

And brought from its source a holy fount 

Over which the image of the sun perpetually rising — shed- 
ding down — 

And at the very end of flashing ranks of angels triumphal 

Whose helmets for ever turning to mirror — 

This diff'using — rearing Grail of pouring iridescence — 

Death, will you not fill me with Love again — 

With Love in its resonant morning mood — 

With Love once more for all those 

For whom I have lost love in anguish — 

shall not those blasted holes of my wounds 

With their stark-twisted clumps of raw nerve — 

[14] 



Be filled in — be pleated down 

With joyous sprays of blossom acutely fragrant — and by 
you — 

O Death, I am secretly in love with you — 

Your motions suggesting — undulating — receding for me — 

Like a ribbon of birds fading across the sky — 

Your motions touching — evaporating — over me — 

Like the poignancy of invisible flowers through evening mists — 

your movements are absorbing to watch — 

And exhaling a vastly fresh perfume — 

Like moon-glossed rushes and water-lilies floating — wavering 

scarcely — 
Along the dreaming stir of the tides. 



[15] 



XI 

At dawn You will give me a robe wet from the spring of 

heaven 
For keeping me refreshed going up — 
Yet maybe it will be cold against me at first — 
Blown around by those sharp slurring winds 
Cutting so acutely at the slender thread between body and 

soul — 
During half lights — 

maybe I shall be very cold until the sun rising 
And sucking the moisture off my garment into roseate smoke- 
wreaths — 
Ere the risen sun swathing in flames of definite glory 
My celestial mantle — 

Yet already Your eyes pouring shafts of insistent beckoning 

light 
From behind the rifted fleece of storm-hurried clouds — 
Already Your voice breathing up through the rhythmic boom 

of invisible seas — 
Already benediction drifting down towards me — a recessional 

choir tone 
Through the groined shadows of these cathedral trees — 
And all this drawing me invincibly — inexorably — after — 
Your eternal passing beyond. 

Yet — yet — let me rest longer among these great candles 
Cataracting their wax like an avalanche of leprous bones — 
[16] 



Among these subtle glasses blown from the cold honey-breath 

of stars — 
Among these rapture-tilted angels clawing their lutes 
In passion-haunted reverie — 
Among these rare velvets that are like sin caught naked at 

sunrise — 
That are like the twitching blush of a bride under her gilded 

veil 
(At the horned caress of some unholy thought.) 

Yet — yet — let me rest longer — 

Near my love coming — going — with his singing limbs — 
His solicitous leaning over me — 

His feather-gentle etching across my heart with flame — 
His abrupt dimness of breathless drawing away — 
Ere the dazzling swim of our blinded gesture towards one an- 
other — 
Ere the flooding anguish of our eyes meeting in a divine tide 
Whispering — breaking against demand for release from 
desire — 

we so terribly locked — yet with feet growing ever more 

transparent 
In this black swarm of receding sensuous necessity — 
our lips already bathed in a staggering vapour of bending 

clouds — 
a curious chill seeming to spray our blood 
Like effusion of glittering snow silence — 
And all of these phenomena merely chiming Your approach — 

Your advent — 
And down Your sturdy stair of hyacinth twilight-hued — 
And in Your wistful robes of tenderest invitation. 

Ah who could deny Your pure essence 
Beckoning toward the gleam of a rest final — 
[17] 



And I — I turning swiftly to depart from my love 

To disentangle me from the minute pressure of his hands — 

To cut my glance away from his half smile flickering up 

(Echoes humming from summer dreams perhaps) 

But my love is so fast asleep 

Nor can I depart from him while he is still sleeping — 

I charge You tarry a little for me until he wsikens 

So that I may come to You unharassed — 

And after directing the widely-open eyes of my love 

Toward that point where I shall cease to adhere — 

And pass — acclaiming in the lure of Your upward streak. 



[18] 




*'0 through what unperceived and monster doorway 

And out unto the airy porticos of my youth 

Could there have stepped a shape so Titan as this melancholy- 



XII 

The paths of my spirit are darkened, Lord. 

They are moiled with infernal thmiders — 

They are drowned in poisonous rains — 

They are divided and turned aside from a veiled centre — 

Somewhere was a white hird once 

And singing upon a golden bough — 

Nevertheless have I lost the last ray from its glittering, 

Yea even have I mislaid the direction 

From whence came its shrill sweet voice — 

The ways of my spirit are darkened, Lord. 
The clairvoyant shadows of all purpose are waylaid — mur- 
dered — 
In these iron fists of numbness — 
through what unperceived and monster doorway 
And out unto the airy porticos of my youth — 
Could there have stepped a shape so Titan as this melan- 
choly — 
Through what hideous gash at the sea's limpid base 
Could there have swollen up such raw sinews of ice — 
And rending the belly of my ship — 

And spilling her entrails in blotchy tracks through the water — 
And crunching her dancing gallantry of masts 
Into a rusty mess of spars — 

Aye directing — pushing her entire bulk of wreckage 
Against those jagged rotting coasts of fruitlessness — decay — 
Despair — horrible — animal — because unclassified. 

The ways of my spirit are darkened, Lord, 
And my loneliness — my ignorance crying out 
[19] 



Like a child who is being struck in his sleep — 

And just when he was commencing to dream of the door 
opening 

Onto blue celestial — 

(And framing those entwined figures of the divine fairy- 
tale ~) 

Since only lately measuring the twisted slant of my own recum- 
bent spirit — 

Since only lately the humility — clarity — of self -knowing 

Kissing back those austere lashes of my spirit 

Into a tender sidelong glancing at me — 

And, how swiftly — greedily 

I basked in the shine of that regard — 

Unknowing where there is hurry there is pretence — 

Unknowing the manner of receiving a thing 

Changes it — 

Unknowing there are myriad convictions of right 

Rumours of peace — 

That can suddenly silence — like a sparrow's singing through 

thunder 
Along this devious road toward invincible rest — 

This road so continually made — so continually washed 

away — 
By storm floods of sand rearing — showering down — 
By winds of dust and ashes erupting — 
From that mysterious desert of What Has Been. 

it is long now since there was a white bird 

And singing upon a golden bough • — 

For the paths of my spirit are darkened, Lord — 

They are moiled with infernal thunders — 

They are drowned in poisonous rains — 

They are divided and turned aside from a veiled centre. 

[20] 



XIII 

My life flowing out into new channels — 

I feel the farewell jar of the old wharves 

Against the sides of this newly launching boat — 

the shock of these listing giving wharves thumping my 

heart 
As well as the lithe gleaming flanks 
Of this vigorous eager ship of mine — 
Faces deeply familiar dimming there on the shore — 
Never mind I both fear — desire — 

They shall become eternally polished — distinct — arrested — 
In that shattering glare of memory — 

my ship was growing for a long time — 
Builded stalwart and curious by invisible labor — 

Nor could her vast swelling lines submit any longer to dry- 
dock — 

Nor be kept from flinging out their robustness 

Across the undulant body of the sea — 

Nor her gilded beak be prevented from plunging — tangling 
deeply 

In the f oam-mained throat of the storm — 

And now standing for ever inseparable to her deck — 
Watching her strike at the shining gums of the sea — 
To be spewed back again — 
Upon the twisting celestial-white teeth of the ocean — 

1 — becoming so close interwoven with visible wonders 
(Throbbing salt air 

[21] 



Vibrating with the festive shriek of sun-drunken gulls — 

Or these cloud battalions forming into monstrous ramparts 

Thinning into recumbent gods — 

Shredding out into children's pin-wheels — ) 

That somehow the invisible blurring into gradual plainness 

Like a sublime dream appearing 

From around those abysmal curvings of night — 

Onto the plain of day. 



[22] 



XIV 

It is Your thirst after my righteousness 

Calling up to me in that most remote tower where I sit — 

And combing out my hair toward the rising moon — 

And musing upon my page — 

Who makes answer unto my glance with a tightening of his 

fingers 
Across the harp — 

it is Your great voice small with a yearning 

Rushing up — ceasing abruptly — and at the very folds of my 

silver hangings 
Like one who running to a door yet hesitates to enter — 
From excessive wish — 

And a wanness falling between me and my page 

Through which the burn of his glance is put out — 

And a drooping passing over these banks of blue delphinium 

Like a sudden sheet of silence falling across water — 

illumined, I am convinced You are near — 

already Your whispers commencing to drop in eddies of 
dazzle about me — 

Infinite — golden — as the breeze-rippled drifts of sun and 
moon shine 

Fencing in dazzling chains those gentle boundaries of para- 
dise — 

already Your words causing an aching — twitching clamour 
in my heart — 

[23] 



As upon regarding some infant's hand leaning over his cradle 
And clutching the air at dusk. 

You say — make way for yourself to follow me 

For I have need of your following — 

In order to be that which you search so relentlessly — 

But in all things beautiful trembling upon the edge of celestial 

adventure are You — 
In the swaying masts of outgoing ships at dusk — 
In the suddenly loosened peal of the organ shooting up 

through nave — vaults 
And bringing down at my feet a quarry of scarlet-blue sun 

motes — 
From the rose-windows high — beyond — 
And in the milk-pure breath of the morning moist over the 

land — 
above all in the clover damp breath of the morning beading 

the earth 
And I aware of Your beckoning — 

And of Your loosening back toward my oncoming arms 
A flock of doves interpreters of rare caresses between us — 
For a while — only for a while. 

indeed, You are that regard inseparable — prophetic of me 

Wheref rom I am refreshed — reminded 

Of my infinite expansion — affiliation with all — 

And it is because I know You are close — ever closer to me — 

That everything shall be awarded and again forsaken 

And for the scent of your shadow — 

Drifting back — reassuring — through enormous conflicting 

shades — 
Shades — that are strung a wilful ornament 
Upon Your invisible Sword of Light Eternal. 



[24] 



XV 

THE setting moonlight is floating in a globe 

Across this wavering lake-water — 

It is like a chinese lantern — 

Poked by the languid fingers of a ghost — 

And far beyond a spray of moonlight — wreathing the water 

And that is like scintillant rifts 

Commencing in some sky — 

About to be furled completely backward and away — 

Before the blazing Advent 

Of a Promised God. 



[25] 



XVI 

MY spirit, longing for that moment 

When the songs of the flesh are subdued eternally — 

My spirit straining after the dawn — 

After those pale tapering fingers 

Aslant and beckoning in the sky 

And suggesting a hand — prodigal of star-runged ladders — 

my fragile spirit, stretching — yearning 

Towards this luminous gash spreading among the cloud-banks 

(Just as in autumn young birds shuddering — lifting their 

wings — 
Toward an orange flare of southern gardens — ) 
Aye, I am weary — weary of this bronze berry-pelted carnival 

of health — youth — 
Through which my spirit so incessantly wandering — 
And for ever clipping those purple shadows — 
Quilting my amorous exuberance — 
With a sudden downfall of disturbing azure light. 



[26] 



XVII 

TO WALT WHITMAN 

Do you stand by me, my brother — 

Educating beyond impatience insolence or violence 

Toward the multitude, — 

So far from — but ever straining after winged heels — 

Do you impale within my tongue 

Those dagger flutes cutting melodiously 

Towards the soul's most vivid source — 

Through which the unslaked night — 

The dawn deflowering towards sunrise — 

And the replete noon then pouring themselves completely out. 

let no shyest attitude of remote flower 

Fail to reflect a beautiful future through me — 

Nor any murmuring glance of men 

Leave me unshivered with responsive song — 

For who leaning 

Across the toe mark of the race's end — 

With pliant arms flung out toward those darting arrivals 

(Momentarily so exhausted from whispers 

Scorching — exigent — revelatory — of passionate truth — ) 

If not ourselves, my brother — 

Nor who yearning — moving — out from their stars — 
And down those cryptic shimmering stairs 

[27] 



Bloom bannistered — 

With hosanna and blessing of petals 

And still down into that smouldering hush — 

Consuming depression — 

Of the eternal night valleys 

(And for searching after those of their kind) 

If not ourselves, my brother — 

We so excellently knowing how dreams may flutter away 
From hands gnawed too stark by the fangs of imaginary 

isolation — 
Nor how deadly cold becoming a man 
Left amidst the sudden silence of his brain — 
(Aye no more than a scarecrow form 
Turning rapidly shadow upon the waning moon-crescent — ) 

And we — we only — with ever sufficient vigor 

For beating the sunlight from our wings 

Behind such fearfully brooding brows — 

And we — we only — 

With voices sufficiently vigorous to penetrate — suffuse — 

And with clean-heard proclamation — announcing — 

That out of perpetual labour alone — 

Arriving that joy invulnerable 

Which asks of futurity no hostage. 



[28] 



XVIII 

DO not speak to me in the half voice of poetry 

For Your sonority ringing out only thinly through poetry 

And like an organ pealing under tides — 

And like some litany recited in a sublime voice — 

From far behind the choir stalls 

Deep within sanctuary. 

do not speak to me in the half tones of music — 

For only sad spirits stretching up their misty lengths in 

music — 
And from out those shadow-locked seas of my innumerable 

endings — 
And so garlanding in extremest melancholy 
My already drooping head. 

speak to me in prayer — 

Speak to me rather in a prayer — 

A prayer fusing those rhapsodies of my heart 

Into rocketing phrases — 

Phrases that are like eagles — spiral — fleet 

Pecking upon the tracks 

Of Your sun-stained heels. 

let a prayer shoot up 

Like a rocket of lilies sheathed in golden fire — 

And bursting a puff of rippling petals — 

And thus a mantle of supreme perfume cast down before 

You — 
[29] 



And You turning — mollified at last into sublime condescen- 
sion 
Toward my hot clamouring eyes — 

Since almost am I beyond loneliness — Inner Voice — 
And already a pity — a humour hammering — caressing my 

heart 
Demanding for a love to come out of it — 
Giving — giving — beyond returns — beyond loss of hope. 

I wonder, Inner Voice — 

Shall it be long now ere your outline 

Eternally blanching my shadow along this dusty road — 

Ere the sense and heavenly jar of you against me — 

Ere your lashes sweeping my cheek — 

And of your grave voice whispering to me higher — higher — 

Until swelling out of my art entirely — 

And into a vast draught of sound 

Blowing out from the blue-white open door 

Of paradise. 



[30] 



XIX 

Who could be near to me 

As this something I need so sharply 

During those long hours before dawn — 

I have laid aside my book — 

And reverie is smoothing back my hair 

With her mist-scented fingers — 

And her mysterious look 

Is clutching my eyes aloft toward her glance — infinite 

Vaulted with a million inscriptions of memory — 



Yet I gaze profoundly without discovering 
This clarity I am searching — 

It is not love since a lover is satisfied at best 
In finding lyric names for his appetites — 
And worst of all in falling asleep before laughing over him- 
self. 



It is not oblivion 

For after oblivion I am oppressed with a sense 

Of having neglected pain — 

Pain — then surely sending lethargy to waken me up 

And stare at me out of her waxen lids — 

And suffocate me with the maul 

Of her glutenous unkempt hands — 

[31] 



Nor is it madness — for madness reversing me all too soon 
Out from her conch of wine-soaked roses — 

Yet somewhere near — unmistakably — are waterfalls of 

music — 
Disgorging a fresh and solemn wildness through the air — 
And somewhere near — unmistakably — 
A blistering splendour of intensely flying robes — 

I am insatiably lonely for This Presence 

Just ahead of me — 

I long to come nearer to this Upholder 

Unfurling the standard of my very breath — 

To this Bearer of my future resemblance 

Turning back rarely — suddenly — and whitewashing my eyes 

With illumination — 

With a radiance throwing completely into shadow at last — 

That prowling lamp of my vast weariness — 

indeed I am insatiably lonely for This Presence 
Just ahead of me — 

indeed I long to come nearer to this Upholder 
Unfurling the standard of my very breath. 



[32] 



EMOTIONAL 



I 

I HAVE asked of you 

An almost invisible touch upon our mortal lives — 

And the comrade's eyes turned — wistful — humorous — 

Along with mine unto the sky — 

And back again to our dilemma of passions — 

I have asked of you 

To revel with me in solitude so that returning from widely 

apart directions 
We meet smiling — recounting at will our adventures of alone- 

ness — 
transcending without losing passion — 
Is indeed to be the singer and he who listens in one — 
Therefore I have asked of you 
To step out and away with me from repeating the history of 

love 
So dignifying — placing ourselves — in a new chapter. 



[35] 



II 

TO CLAUDE DEBUSSY'S LA GROTTE 

Your song 

As the hale of mysterious exotic intention 

Drifting in palpitating echoes 

O'er the pallid oval 

Of night-closed flowers — 

Your song 

As the increasing shimmer 
Of some exquisite nearness — 
Clad in those steel-dark foils 
Of sinister fancy — 

And once more your song 

As the moaning hush of a human soul 

Receding — from the Divine Moment. 



[36] 



in 

THE cool fragrant breathing of this night 
Savouring my breast — 

And becoming the caress of my bridegroom's 
Ivory and scented fingers — 

the moon's blue veined oval 
Remote — melancholy — 
Even as my lover's so delicate face 
Dreaming — half turned away — 

these wavering blades of moonlight 

Whipping out their pallid brilliance 

From scabbards of the breeze — 

They are like the scintillant attenuate limbs of my lover 

Flashing upon me. 



[37] 



IV 



Your face — so beautiful — 

And all celestial arias 

Rising — humming throughout me — 

And like some mist of harping angels 

Upon regarding you — 

Your limbs — so beautiful — 

The muscular uncoiling of a snake — 

The drawn-back gums — the spring of rending frenzy 

Aye the tormented postures of inordinate demand 

Are about them — 

Your hands so curiously marvellous 

They are languid — brutal — 

Yet tentative with wonder — with worship — 

As the hands of a young child 

While timidly parting back those rainbow curtains — 

Between himself and fairyland. 



[38] 



They say he is dead who is my beloved — 
Yet I know he has need of his rest only — 
And that his wakening glory 
Shall tear my lashes wide with obeisant hail 
And through innumerable epoch — 

But I am desolate — I am desolate — 
Who am not yet near enough to death 
To be enthralled by its splendour — 
Nor likely to find any footpath toward life 
Through such wreckage of weeping — 

For they say he is dead who is my beloved — 

Yet I know he searches a dream for strength 

To stir — waken — and springing from his couch 

So meet my attendance among those carven shadows 

Of the endless gates — 

For I am my beloved's of yesterday — of to-morrow ■ 

But to-day is a rusty door I cannot shake open — 

my grief and I are strangers yet 

Too unfamiliar for perpetual gazing — 

Nor aware of each other 

Save through sudden furtive stabs of sore — 

my sorrow exactly like an abrupt series of shrieks 

Reverberating through nightmare — 

And awakening into a more terrible reality — 

For they say he is dead who is my beloved — 
Yet I know he is only nimbly renewing himself — 
And in order to stride more vigorously a radiance 
[39] 



Rearing across countless horizons — 
And sweeping him in galloping majesty 
Toward my eternal surrender — 

So let me approach swiftly unto my love 

Yearning down toward him — 

And flushing his ivory mask with vivid whispers 

Concerning our future tryst — 

And fingering his gentle hair 

So soft — so limp — as the pinions 

Of a wounded bird — 

And smoothing my cheek along his breathless breast 

Toward appointing with his heart 

Our bridal hour — 

And cease lathering the air with sighs 

Around this stone laced couch 

Where my chiselled young love sleeps so beautifully — 

For I would listen to the tale of his ascension — 

Descending frigidly toward me — 

Through those vaporous beam-raining meadows between us 

I would hear how the stars look now so near 

And sparkling down toward his hand — 

As a necklace of rockets may be — 

And of how the seas seem caught to the earth — 

Perhaps like pallid drops glittering upon a leaf — 

And more than all, if my name beats around him 

As a tumult of wings — 

Above — in that silence beyond the winds — 

For you say he is dead who is my beloved — 

But I tell you what is loved in the soul may only increase 

And death but a cup of water along carnal roads 

Restoring — reanimate — 

Toward a more perfect competence — for deeper reunion. 

[40] 



VI 

You two — loving me — tending me — 

And leaning toward one another — 

And across my sick-bed at twilight — 

United in joy for my various recovery — 

I feel in this certain hour — 

Through this blue surge of retreating light — 

Your two figures to be caught and also retreating — 

That your dimming faces- — 

Your contours fingered — covered — by the ascending dusk 

To be expressing some omen of vast change assuming between 

us — 
On this certain night — beneath the smooth hum of evening — 
And despite the tranquil lighting of our house. 



[41] 



VII 

My foot is often started upon the mountain — 

In that pungent pine-tangle at the base of the mountain — 

With the damp breath of wild fern and spice of laurel 

Exhaling over me — 

With a gleam from the heights trickling down through the 

branches 
Pertinent — transparent — urging — elating me — 

When suddenly the flutter of wings — 

you come to me on wings — there is the insidious part — 

And your clutch hovering abruptly over me sheathed in 
fleece — 

That is your disarming side — 

And your eyes fastening upon mine with that depth of ques- 
tioning 

That is spiritually extraneous — 

So holding us for ever strangers — 

Then a hunger rising between us never to be satisfied — I 

think — 
Until we can turn away — 

Then blasphemy granting some strange vitality to each — 
And a brief madness behaving so like joy — 
When relief arriving conspicuously without peace — 
And somehow like a wan grief -stricken face 
We have insulted — 
[42] 



Yet these questions for ever continuing beyond response of 

passion or relief — 
is it not our souls asking of one another — 
When shall there be a loosening — a parting between us — 
And a lifting up toward that divine convergence — 
Where possession ceases to torture 
Since all is shared by all. 



[43] 



VIII 

OUR love is a moist white gleaming — 

As the limbs of fountainal figures 

That are laved by the intermingling of moonlight and water — 

our love has a foaming stem of wan effulgent perfume — 
That is like those heavy wet stalks of marsh-grown orchids — 

our love spreading a deadly coolness along our lips — 
Just as perfume from the stamen of a certain orchid 
Reminding — warning the traveller and suddenly — 
That he is in a place of death — 

our love has hair like a shower of coins — 

Heels the wind follows — 

And a face eternally oval — running the scale of aspect. 

Since now diademed in joy — 
Now trailing into that ashen yawn of dissolution — 
Now brightening under the glaze of reassurance — 
Benediction — long-sought — 

And again our love has those little clutching hands of for- 
gotten children — 
In dark wind-swept rooms. 



[44] 



IX 

TO MY MUSE 

The worst loneliness 

When your oracular voice 

Drawing no patterns in the wind — 

Nor stringing into pertinent fanfares 

The trumpetings of sunlight — 

Nor sighing up joyously 

Through some crescendo of passionate desire — 

Nay between me and life nothing whatever in common 

Save when you — stirring my reactions with sparkling hints 

Interpret the invisible — 

So causing me to effervesce into expression 

Momentarily bringing events parallel — 

With fancy. 



[45] 



I WISH you well — I wish you well — 

Dear once-beloved — 

I have hewn myself apart from you 

Wounding you unto death where you stood there 

Smiling — unsuspecting — 

Yet you cannot think how blasted my hand 

From hurling the spear — 

Nor how blinded my eyes 

From tearing back the curtain before yours — 

your pain from me sinking down and out of you 

And falling away — 

Like mist ribbons unchaining the morning — 

But I shall not be there to slur my ache 

In the lull and limpidness fanning invisibly back 

Shadows before light — 



[46] 



Nor freshen — reassure — straighten myself again — 
In that ever further prevailing brightness — 

Since for ever I shall see the descending blow — 

With something tolling frantically 

About your height springing up to meet me — 

Since eternally I shall perceive the swaying — tottering 

Of something in your eyes — 

And crashing — filling across your familiar features of anguish 

In gulfs — in streaks of leaden pour — 

Of agony bubbling hotly — gathering in clots along your dear 

face — 
And lividly brightening — accentuating your likeness — 
Somehow like a man seen to be panting out his life 
In a column of flame — 

once beloved, this grief — 

That I have hammered so pitilessly in 

Through the tender white skin of your temples — 

It will haunt me for ever — 

And as a child moaning out in the snow 

After my retreating steps — 

And as the dim sound of hands listlessly falling apart — 

Exhausted from pleading — toward my averted eyes. 



[47] 



XI 

During the night-tide my departed love illumining beside me 
And his words like the hiss of approaching flood 
Across droughted places — 

And his embrace washing my fatigue 

As a draught of orchard perfume 

Stealing through dishevelled city curvage — 

the splendour of his dream-felt touch 
Sweeping me with fanfare of rainbows — 
the splendour of our contact irradiating me 
With arpeggios of colour — 

As my love so delicately erasing my tears 

With the plumed sweep of his caressing lash — 

As my love so tenderly dwelling against me 

And praying over our inseparable future — 

Until amongst those flashing corners of his winged mouth 

My sorrow drowning for ever. 



[48] 



XII 

NEURASTHENIA 

Even through these chaotic fumes lit — fed — 

By hours spent reversing from affinity — 

Even through this tepid catastrophic blur 

Brewed from continual insincerity — 

Aye, despite the grinding gash of scruples 

Exploding inversely to the fore — 

Despite the bleating din of appalling infirmities arraigned 

Against the inquisitorial frown of ascending conscience — 

Aye, despite all this am I aware of a cherished voice whispering 

That joy — joy — 

Shall be for ever enclosing — sustaining — producing me — 

Out of her mystic heart. 



[49] 



XIII 

Those times when all affections becoming too pressing — 

All rooms too stifling — 

And each obligation crushing further 

Beneath disordered lassitude — 

Ah then the mellow invitation of lonely roads — 

So inflated by endless currents of reviving freshness — 

Ah then the mauve-blue tidal wrap of twilight — 

Descendant — beckoning — 

From across those collapsing shoulders of a weary day — 

And then throughout this delicate relaxing silence — 

Assurance — permeating — incontestable — as the spread of 

dawn — 
Reassurance that in all life a future — 
Continually developing in beauty and toward beginnings 
Forever more sublime. 



[50] 



XIV 

That I should call from you 

The thirst unquenchable — 

Loosening between us a secret 

To be eternally approached — touched — 

Yet receded from unknown — 

And after all familiarities — 

Since forever from me toward you 

A coquetry beckoning — alluring — leading you — 

And as the beautiful walking — just ahead — 

Of some strange figure through semi-darkness — 

Imbuing you — pensive pursuer 

With accruing tenderness — sadness of desire — 

indeed I will hide forever from you, my beloved, 

And in a smile glittering up from this absorbing mystery 

That I am to myself. 



[51] 



XV 

Ascendant upon the mountain with a lighted candle 

Just before dawn 

Since I had heard the sluring roar of Your voice 

(Afar — yet indubitably toward me — ) 

And the push of Your vast descendant draperies — 

(Like an avalanche sounding momentously different 

Above racketing glacier streams — ) 

Since drops of scent from Your fingers 

Had already feathered across me in a snow-lifting breeze — 

Together with complete assurance of Your Presence drifting 

out 
In a current of blinding refreshment — 
From the heart of adjacent pine- woods — 

Then — I — pricked with intrepid vigour — 
With desire for pressing upward — 
For sitting in the blue-white shadow of Your wings — 
For reading by the light of my own candle 
In this " Book of Why " spread widely open upon Your mas- 
sive knees — 

For reading — while below 

From the very centre of dawn's smoking uncoiling limbs — 

Recumbent darkness forming — rearing — straightening — 

clarifying 
Into transparent patches — golden-barred — 
[52] 



And these — awakening cities — 

(Strung along — spangling the shore as a necklace of rain- 
bows - — ) 

For reading — while the night glazing off into distance 
Until merely a pin-prick scratching the horizon with smoke — 
While from below a muffled stir of wakening birds — children 

— flowers — 
And of their sweet exhalations of rest 
Dampening into golden perfume inquisitive sun-bars — 

For reading till deriving a comfort to spread 

Over these wailing storming seas beneath daily thorough- 
fare — 

So bearing away perchance some device for enduring hour 
upon hour 

When no glorious conviction appearing unannounced 

Across the dim portals of reverie — 

Well I was ascending toward all this 

When abruptly you were there 

With your pallid darkness 

And glittering about you of an ailing light — 

your touch upon my hand was subtle with entreaty — 

You bent over running your mouth 

Throughout my hair 

Your kisses wove around my head a web 

Entangling — crushing — blurring away from me 

The transparent beckoning of my shrine — 

Ah then — then — a grotesque curtain fell between me — my 

temple — 
The archaic flute played — to the patter of hoofs — 
The air was a shower of scarves flung aside 
[53] 



With sobbing whining savage gesture — 

Until flower-sprayed grasses grew suddenly bruised — 

it is late — it is late now 

The rain is pouring heavily downward 

The rain has extinguished my candle — 

in this weight of wet darkness — 

In this gloom heavy as the upturned tear-soaked earth 
Of every tomb fresh-made — 

1 feel that You have closed Your Book and risen up — ^be- 

yond — 
To greet those ardent ones 
Leaning out — awaiting You — 
Along the star-foaming tracks of higher spheres. 



[54] 



XVI 



My thoughts of you a hand 

Stealing across yours 

No matter where you shall go — 

My thoughts of you evoking in you 

An haunting sense of resemblance 

Between me and whatever you shall see — 

My thoughts of you 

Bursting the moon-locked surface 

Of your stillest dream — 

And figured in shrill carnival laughter 

And moving grotesquely forward 

Through a seething flare of balloons 

And to where you standing — 

Wearily straining yourself remote 

From all possible ties — 

Then my thoughts of you pressing upon your mouth 

Your evasive — flippant — tragic mouth 

A kiss — sharp — evanescent — 

And drawing you for ever after its insinuation 

That you should know yourself further — 

Upon tasting it again. 



[55] 



XVII 

COMRADE, in that strange illicit dialogue 
Of our perfectly matched fancy — 
my comrade, in that eager dual spurt upward 
Through the liquid pearl air of the dawn • — 
Upward — and hard upon those violet tracks 
Of the Divine Evasion — 

it is rare — terrible — to have once greeted anything 

So poignantly akin to me as you are — 

To have hailed one standing so intensely out from the rest — 

And with a shock of such appalling familiarity about him — 

your appearance like a shaft of lightning 

Framing the exact reverse likeness of my own accumulating 

image — 
(And against the slow-limbed thick-featured drifting past 
Of the half-awakened world-children — ) 
your face like a torch flashing the myriad interiors of my 

past — 
Showing the innumerable actualities of you and me between 

deaths — 
And ere the loss of great memories 
Filled us with gathering inexplicable sadness — 

it is rare — terrible — to have once greeted anything 

So poignantly akin to me as you are — 

You with that bewildering tragic beauty 

Of a blasphemously impatient spiritual yearning — 

[56] 



You — with that childish drooping at the corners 

Of your transparent lovely mouth — 

And with your frown distorting — conflicting — 

Most eloquently expressing through your eyes 

The frantic upward clamouring tangle of your mind — 

And again with your slender boyish body 
Fountaining a jet of gracious curves at every motion — 
glancing at you loosens me completely unto myself — 
your beauties strike me with an alertness 
Separating — classifying — making order — form — 
From the variously straining erupting angles of my own sub- 
lime vitality — 

comrade, in that strange illicit dialogue 
Of our perfectly matched fancy — 
my comrade, in that eager dual spurt upward 
Through the liquid pearl air of the dawn — 
Upward — and hard upon those violet tracks 
Of the Divine Evasion. 



[57] 



XVIII 

Lean your mouth well over into the moonlight 

So that I may kiss it full, chance — 

Press me into your pungent arms 

So jagged with nightmare — so rent with spasmodic glories — 

So pliant with momentary relaxing- — 

your arms so compact with variety — 

For now strident with triton freshness 

And glossed as if by spray shaken off a burst of godliness 

Out of glacier streams — 

And now slippery — darkened with that moulten calm 

Preceding some sinister extase — 

chance — stinging — refreshing 

Like a sudden rain of flowers across my being that is ever held 

So deliberately accessible — 

chance teasing with evasive glimpses of some further road 

Ever lightening towards breathless eventualities — 

Aye, for ever alternately veiling — disclosing — 

That face approximate of Heaven — and hell. 



[58] 



XIX 

I AM resting by the edge of the sea — 

But in my arm is a curve imperceptible 

For the weight of your head — lover — comrade — 

My feet are damp with the vigorous jet of the sea — 

My body is splashed in a sudden pour of sunlight 

Spreading down now in widening — blazing torrents — 

From behind the pushed-away clouds — 

Yet I long to be chilled — warmed — and surpassing these 

And by our limbs co-mingling lover — comrade. 



[59] 



XX 

I DO not care for the future — 

Knowing well my capacities to deal with it 

Are breeding up from the fulness of my response 

To this single hour — 

Therefore do not ask of me the future — beloved — 

And rather let us hold gently to one another — 

Courting — inviting ease — 

And sending one another away benignantly refreshed — 

Proud — befriended with the memory of an eternal moment. 



[60] 



XXI 

How cruel those steps pausing at the door — passing onward — 

When one is waiting • — 

How like knife thrusts those ordinary domestic sounds 

Through which a listening concentrates in vain — 

How often going to the window — back again — at the slightest 

excuse — 
As if motion could evoke a coming — 
Then gradually the soul becoming mortally wounded 
And by strokes of the clock — 
Irretrievably widening a distance — between one's self and 

hope. 



[61] 



XXII 

Thou art oppressed, my soul — 

In the chill sweet air 

Among the blurred grey grasses — 

Aye standing in the golden pour of sunrise — even 

Thou art oppressed — 

For the present is a cluttered maelstrom of yesterday — to- 
morrow — 
And tomorrow a vapid frost of rigid impasse — 
And yesterday a swim of troubled things 
Fatal during some unnoticed moment — 
from where erupting this army of agonies 
At whose outposts already thou art slain, my soul — 
Slain in such earliness — in such bright cool air smoking yet 
With the deep-shaded perfume of night — 

my love was a child — and mad — and he rent apart our 
ofF-shoot — 



[62] 



Our issue — so fair and grave with a mounting future — 

So gentle from memory — 

And so vastly akin to the moment as all youth is — 

And perceiving this to happen during inconsolable length — 

I slanted insensible toward numbness — 

indeed some dim weight has fallen across my innermost 

spring 
And my eyes are sealed in sleep — 
In a sleep concealing no further dream. 

" Out of the day and night 
A joy has taken flight; 

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, 
Move my faint heart with grief, but with dehght 
No more — 0, never more ! " 

(From Shellefs " Lament*') 



[63] 



XXIII 

Another sun — another sky — another earth out of other 

tides — 
And we certainly quickening toward one another again — 
And once more the " Why " lost of myriad sighs — tears — 
During ensuing search of each other — 
And surely a vast pathos left over from this time 
Invisibly striking us — 

Like a harp sounding from some haunted room — 
And as now so then — justice co-ordinate — all-pervading — 
Minutely — spherically at work — 
Inexorably sucking out the pattern 
From what is drawn underneath. 



But now your figure is walking off there into the vast night 
With pain — age — death ahead of you — of you so familiar 

to me 
Who am nevertheless debarred from sharing these things with 

you — 
how will contrast be sustained 
Between orchards dusting the inclining spring sky 
With their pink foam — 
And my threadbare shivering past — 

Between music rippling out across the shoulders of dancers 
Reaching — inviting my excluded feet 
brightening into luminous shame 
The silence of my jaded instep — 
[64] 



Or when — or when — upon reading some loveliness beside 

the fire 
I look up already speaking — into your empty chair — 
for another sun — another sky — another earth out of other 

tides. 



[65] 



XXIV 

Sad, we must find each other — ourselves — life — out 

Through this impediment of love — 

(With its billion toe-stubbings along the Olympian track.) 



Pathetic we must exercise by falling out of the sky 
And chasing our own tails for awhile — 
Instead of feeling our manes tearing out behind us 
Along those freezing spiral vapours of The Continuous As- 
cension. 



You and I have stood poignantly close upon the edge of 

perilous slanting — 
And with sublime sunbeams bouncing from upturned face to 

face 
And measuring upon each utter equality of dazzle — 
you and I have leant fraternally together in a light 
Reducing to proportionate form at last — 
All those melancholy grotesques of conscious life — 
Yea and together heard a conclusive goodness afl&rming 
Through vast harp-sweet spaces — 
Then — then — the reverential swoon of our knees 
Before this momentary shining out of the beyond 
Has been cause for a touch between us — 
Ah what union in this accidental knocking of knees 
Before a Shared Presence — 
[66] 



When suddenly — suddenly — 

The thrown-back hood of vision clamping down precipitant, 
And a sadness in the air as of some Divine Retreat — » 

When my claw stirring — waking — reaching out — 
And in your answering motion a gracious shoot of reverberat- 
ing " yea " — 
Then your eyes becoming a liquid gale 
Importunate — parting — pressing aside my branches — 
And your mouth a distortion of fire skipping — falling — 
Clinging strangely among my blossoms — 
My blossoms opening — shedding for you in ghastly broad 

abandon — 
love — love — unequipped — unaware 
Of the subtle fatality in your own repletion. 



" Your Love to Woman and Woman's Love to Man, would 
that it was sympathy for suffering, and veiled deities, but gen- 
erally two animals light on one another." 

(Frederick Nietzsche — " Thus Spake Zarathustra.") 



[67] 



XXV 

Photograph of my mother 

Of lines so familiar — 

So intensely seen upon endless occasion — 

Now in particular recalling those feverish moments of child- 
hood 

Whilst the sheet plucked in twitching chilly hands — 

Whilst the coals in their grate rising into pinnacled Valhallas — 

Falling into burning cities — 

Whilst the blue shadow of a door noiselessly opening 

Against the white wall — 

And now the flowing taste of jellies — 

The moist sweet feathery caress of flowers — 

While always near the rhythmic gestures of my mother sew- 
ing— 

And of the peaceful sound of her work 

And of her gentle sigh toward me — 

So commiserate — so protecting — 

how sweet and warm and clear for the pavane of dreams 

Was my sick room — 

And now what pathos in this picture of my mother — 

Because she suffers more from me still than from any other — 

And I have come to pain — through so much else. 



[68] 



XXVI 

OUR love is like a rainbow 

Shooting up from chasms of incredibly scarlet glee — 

Yet illuminating suddenly the far blonde face of a placid 
star — 

our love is like a bridge fountaining its iridescent strength 

From across some chaos of claw-sprawling spaces — 

Yet toward a columned brightness of strangely perfected meas- 
ure — 

And again our love is like Death — 

Seeming ever to culminate in total cessation — 

As a beautiful dual merging — folding in behind shadows — 

To an increasing surge of song. 



[69] 



XXVII 

I SEE a splendid life opening out before us 

elected mate ever poignant for me 
And pressing unto my effulgent crescent 
The rest of the round — my circle — 
And amazing me with joyous entirety — 

1 see a splendid life opening out before us — 
I smell the sturdy salt and pine of adventure 

Exhaling toward me at the thought of being lashed in flight 
To the storm-courting svelte rigging of your body — 

I see a splendid life opening out before us — 
Despite that cut-glass upon the bare foot of sudden anger — 
Despite those creeping melancholy fingers of sustained mis- 
understanding 
(With their lashes drooping over smouldering flames, 
With their staccato wrenchings away upon the pillow) 
And again despite that abrupt reversed scarlet scrawl of jeal- 
ousy 
Blurring my wifely hymn-book — 



[70] 



Aye, despite all these existent recesses jammed with past inhi- 
bitions — license — 
And self-love striving to love — 
And self-pity melting humour into a glue of hatred — 

Nevertheless and despite this whole tribe 

Taking on the role of risks and swarming up 

From our abused nuance during centuries — 

Nevertheless I affirm there to be a splendid life opening out 

before us 
And indeed a great future flinging along far — far ahead of 

us — 
And with its vast muttering unclassified yet 
Whether litanizing failure — 

Whether swelling to a note of sublime applause — 
I say who knows — who cares 

Who is competent to become inseparable from the moment — 
Who is worthy to enter in — react — and faithfully record 

the moment — 
And I loving you with that perfect freedom 
Which is replete expression of each one of my gifts — 
Must surely thus love you for ever — 

indeed I see a splendid life unfolding before us, 
Elected mate ever poignant for me • — 
And pressing unto my effulgent crescent 
The rest of the round — my circle — 
And amazing me with joyous entirety. 



[71] 



DESCRIPTIVE 



Sonata, Op. 54 — Omstein 

Muscular grotesques crowing to one another 

From moon-stained minarets — 

The mauve-rayed air of a classic dawn 

Breezing into legato motion — virginal draperies — 

When suddenly obscene juggleries 

With passions combative — tentative — 

Arabesque, G Major — Debussy 

A million pattering feet of ballet — 

The " jeux " of puppets — and with bubbles — 

And across nets made of shadows rimmed by lightning — 

Etude, D Flat Major. Ravel 

The lisping perfection of emasculated fancy 
Swerving into that self-saturated hush 
Of complaining silence — 

The Composer-Pianist 

Greek-browed — moist-eyed — sinuous — 

And about his brooding face 

That gloaming light of thought ever breaking into flames 

Kindling to warm into blossoming expressive — 

Those strange fruits of a curious reverie. 



[75] 



II 

THE ATLANTIC FROM MY WINDOW 

Watching the foam draping in hissing white garlands — 
This rearing coil of the waves — 

Watching the tails of fish 

Joyfully spouting up in sudden black dots — 

Along the blue shimmer — 

Watching the patterns of foam receding swiftly back — 
Mounting — streaking the unbroken waves — 
Like snow-spotted mountains — 

And becoming absorbed then — sucked down — 

Down through this rhythmic thunder — 

Down — down into those vastly stirring depths of my self. 



[76] 



Ill 

FRANCE — AUTUMNAL 

SAD spatter of rain — 

Echoing in the court below — 

And sounding somehow like the call 

Of ghostly swallows — 

Autumnal France 

This mournful yellow trellis 

Of your falling leaves 

Ever parted by Love — dual — 

Ice-white with a sense of ending — 

And for ever dropping The Diminutive Black Glove 

And as the living whole cloven in dead twain 

And flinging blindly apart — 

Then how small appearing this fading black glove - 

Through the immense-breeding mantle of darkness - 

how pitiably slight a human figure anyway 

Against the vast shadow-streaked horizon — 

Of a great gesture. 



[77] 



IV 

The dawn for me is like some still-born face 
Rising and reflecting a frustrated loveliness — 
Over shrouded landscapes. 

The dawn for me is like a silent radiance 
Of irrevocable spiritual decision — 
Perfuming the air with frigid splendour. 

The dawn for me is like the ripple of celestial voices 
Echoing away among opalescent cloud domes — 
And leaving the beholder childish from comfort — 
And more vulnerable far to the hot-footed hammering of a 
sunlit day — 

Ah then the accumulated wistfulness of memories — 

Tugging abruptly as starving children 

Whom one has forgotten to feed — 

Ah then the sore gathering — spreading upon a heart 

Congested with diverging affections — 

And pallidly passing into attenuate dismemberment 

Through conflicting impulse — 

For such a one — the dawn is like an arpeggio of harps — 
Luring — inviting — to pass backward from the day — and 

for ever 
Into those slurred violet and alabaster reveries — 
Of half -dreams. 
[78] 



V 

THE CIRCUS — MONTMARTRE 

Faces — circling in up-flung tiers 
Like livid streaks — 

And at the very top silhouettes crouched 
Knotted toward the pit — 
Like trees becoming almost all root 
In order to keep foothold against a wind 
Bending them for ever gulfward — 
And music jangling down 

From a high cage introduced through portieres of smoke — 
And holding in stiff bold rhythm 
The far below wound-up gestures and cries 
Of acrobats — conjurors — and lady equestrians — 
All appearing to me somehow through my half-shut eyes 
A strange mixture of wood — brass — and painted stripes — 
Yet one tragic-closed face standing out amongst them all — 
(And like a murder-stained arm 
Rearing starkly erect amidst a pile of cushions — ) 
Just so this one tragic face flaring its silent bleakness 
In through that midst of row upon row — tier upon tier — 
Of humour-quivered flesh — 

O exactly like a blasted vine scarring the very centre of hun- 
dreds 
Of breeze-tumbled roses — 
This one tragic-closed face standing out amongst them all. 



[79] 



VI 

VERBENA 

Verbena, reminding me of twittering childish feet — 
Of close curls sculpted to the head in moisture — 
Of the darting enthralled form of childhood 
Sublimely discovering — 
Through a blaze of August gardens — 

Verbena, reminding me of summer luncheons 
In a room cooled by lowered awnings — 
Of pyramidal blackberries — raspberries — peaches — 
Recalling in odour their blossoms — 
While without beyond screens 
Bees muttering avidly through melting heat 
From fluted cup to cup of mauve pale Canterbury bells — 
(These peeping in a fringe of gentle glory — across our 
sill — ) 

Verbena — so reminding me 

Of youth's humid eyes dazzling with fitful dreams — 

(As some deep pond is threaded suddenly with gems of glisten 

From a trout's skimming back touched by the sun — ) 

And so intensely recalling youth's tanned sprawled limbs 

Completely relaxed — 

(From lately spearing the surf with slim clear diving — ) 

And so revisioning for me youth's firm berry-stained mouth 

Scornful enpurpled as the lips of feasting classic warriors — 

[80] 



Verbena — Verbena — reminding me of summer luncheons 

In a room cooled by lowered awnings — 

Of pyramidal blackberries — raspberries — peaches — 

Recalling in odour their blossoms 

While before me now — and looking like a knob of city sun- 

shine — 
A bowl of lemon-coloured glass 
Quite filled with Verbena. 



[81] 



VII 

SNOW 

The snow is falling like feathers from the wings 
Of sky-bound virgins — 

Is descending as that quiescent hush 

Across shoulders lately brushed 

By the transparent flight of death towards life — 

The snow is becoming a pallid rhythmic trellis 
Shimmering between me and material contours — 

The snow is becoming a couch of stars freshly chiselled 
Inviting me to glitter back into oblivion — 

Ah this falling snow is erasing my tentative lost footsteps — 
Is blurring away memory beneath meadows crystalline — 
Whose surface once more commencing to be broken by the 

birth of lilies — 
Whose surface once more beginning to be crowded by a flare 

of angels — 
Preceding before that haloed loveliness 
Of Spiritual Awakening. 



[82] 



VIII 

ABRIGADA 

LOVELY house 

Of chaste lines and vast openings 

Unto wind-rippled grasses — 

lovely house 

Of unclad walls licked into strange patterns 

By furious storm-tongues — 

lovely house 

Of arched windows 

Framing — now a river draped through the land 

Trimming the green with silver — 

Now an oak forest quivering — flushing — 

Like a strand of rainbows 

Under the pouring glitter 

Of autumnal sunset — 

lovely house 

Of spacious dim hallways — 

Where happiness trailing so often her draperies 

Their dim hum hardly remarked — 

(Even as some person whose expression is habitually glad 

From the beauty of inward thought) 

lovely house — how sweet it would have been 

To have once been happy — 

Among your serene vague spaces. 



[83] 



IX 

THE DOORS OF NOTRE DAME 

UNEXPECTED, vast Saints towering — emerging out of col- 
umned frames 
Stained with the leprous salt of ageless weather — 
And crooking premonitory fingers — 
While now bells hammering the air like iron fists 
Beating all aware to that metallic command of religion — - 

tier upon tier of slender esthetes 

Frigidly fingering their intricate symbols 

Of a new " Voluptas " 

So aureoled in benignant calm — 

Yet — quite appropriately 

Their slim conforming feet 

Half -clutched amongst those wet jaws 

Of late and terrible misdemeanour — 

So arch upon arch — 

Medallion after medallion — 

Holding their virginal passivities erect — 

These same inclining still — the sidelong paramours of 

snakes — 
So row over row — 

Frieze above frieze — filled with demoniac-vestal mixture 
Of fang — of prayer — 

Glooming up — and now through the descendant night — 
From a bank of fleur-de-lys. 
[84] 



WALKING ROUND NOTRE DAME — EAST WING 

Gargoyles — with their sinister sheepish faces 

Of furtive lust — 

With their fat-coiled monkish-coiffed heads 

Thickening into demoniac limbs — 

(Just like a sausage bursting at the ends between its string) 

Gargoyles — with their lithe-stretched female-breasted 

Half-tiger and half-bird bodies — 

And again gargoyles 

Scale-skinned, carrion-winged, black-bellied — 

Coronetted with ecclesiastical respect. 

pinnacled, infinitely spiked heights 
Fluted by myriad galleries — 
Arabesque — meandering — 
tier upon tier of terraces 
Each the pedestal of innumerable buttresses 
Springing — rearing sturdily with poised upon each lace- 
strewn apex 
Its blasphemous tomb 
Of jeering slit-mouthed infernal — 

Nay, all the fiendish insight of man 

Into those slime-strewn lily-vaulted tendencies 

Of his becoming being — 

Erupting in dark heaven-odoured suggestions 

Along these fountainal intricacies of Notre Dame. 

[85] 



XI 

INSIDE NOTRE DAME 

Rainbowed ghosts single or in rows — 

Tossing up their fire-edged three-cornered balls — 

Enclosing countless zodiac designs 

Of star — of crescent — 

And now the sun setting 

Behind the rose window of Notre Dame — 

And casting a million opals steeped in blood 

Upon the surrounding greyness — 

While behind the opposite window night arising — 

Infusing these vigorous colours 

With a delicate deliberate insistent repression — 

Until gradually they assuming 

The pale grave candours of virginal splendour — 

(As a lover recalling them 

Upon his sable bed of death) 

And now — afar — through distant vaulted gloom 

A shower of arrested stars — 

Prayers — importunate — 

Humbly attempting to warm into noticing them 

Those narrow feet of the Mother of God — 

And into stepping down and granting — 

Their gentle flaming need. 



THE END 



[86] 



